[政治学] Cold War Consequences: is Okinawa an American Colony? Is Thailand?

despite appearances this video is
actually filmed with natural sunlight streaming in from behind the camera so if my appearance changes and if the color of this wall behind me changes it's not my fault I'm posing here a political and historical discussion in response to some statements made by another contributor here on YouTube who raises the interesting and important question of whether or not we should evaluate the history of post-world war to japan in terms of Okinawa being an American colony in terms of Japan's status as this sort of victim of an American occupation in that period and he does so with intelligent and reasonable and factual points he presents a series of facts about the American military presence in Okinawa and those facts would be shocking to anyone who wasn't already familiar with that chapter of history and rightly so and the conclusion he comes to although useful is limited and misleading in talking about politics it's never sufficient to just come to an ethical conclusion and the reason for that is the political science unlike any other science and and many people would say that political science is not a legitimate science in political science we do have to look at questions of context and comparison in looking at what was happening in Japan ed is really relevant to make a comparative statement about what was going on in the same period in Korea in Vietnam in mainland China because that context was shaping the decisions the motivations and the fears of the historical actors in the equation now other Sciences don't work that way this is one of the reasons why there's such a strange mismatch between talking about agriculture as a science and agricultural policy as something that governments do and determine um Okinawa is referred to in the video I'm respond to here as a location of tremendous strategic importance I want to start by saying there's a bit of a chicken and an egg problem there yes Okinawa is of strategic importance because that is where they chose to invest untold millions of dollars to build that base however is the island itself of some kind of intrinsic strategic importance it's it's misleading to say that why was Okinawa overtime increasingly the center of American military operations during the Cold War period very simple answer and it's very sad and it changes the whole tone of the discussion for why the Japanese government through so many successive prime ministers embraced this plan and that was the fear of nuclear war the reason why the Japanese did not want the main American military presence to be on Hokkaido or anywhere near Tokyo or any other major population center they were planning for worst-case scenarios that involve nuclear war the early name it's not even a code name the publicly used name for the American strategy Japan was the nuclear umbrella and for many decades the nuclear umbrella was no joke it's very easy now to look back at that history and to characterize what the Americans and Japanese did with Okinawa in very negative terms as being unnecessary unmotivated as having terrible negative consequences and no positive consequences but the fear of nuclear war and planning for the worst-case scenario shaped those decisions now was Japan justified in being afraid of what is now North Korea being afraid of military aggression from the Koreas during the Cold War period yes and they're still afraid today did you payin have reason to be afraid of Russia during the Cold War period well believe it or not the answer is yes and most Westerners forget that side of the history but Stalin in the end of World War two his army was rapidly progressing from north to south and occupying more and more of Japan the northernmost part of Japan had been called karo futo or cycle and island as it's now called and the loss of cyclin island was a serious blow not even to the Japanese Empire just to the Japanese nation in terms of sheer numbers of people around 1945 Okinawa had fewer than 600,000 people I forget now maybe five hundred fifty thousand thousand eighty thousand cover photo the northernmost big island that Japan occupied had 400,000 Japanese citizens and when the Russians occupied it every single one of the Japanese citizens was extirpated was kicked out suddenly became homeless so the entire Japanese population was expelled from car photo if we're talking about the sort of price of defeat in World War two what the Japanese saw happen to their northernmost island to curfew tow that really demonstrated them how serious the threat was of Russian occupation of Russian annexation and so on in terms of the Japanese surrender to American occupying forces the alternative was to surrender to the Russians and if they had persisted further in the war it is very likely that Japan would have ended up with the situation parallel to what we know in terms of the split between North Korea South Korea the Russians would have continued to conquer further south and then whatever areas of Japan they occupied they would have established as a Russian client state similar to East Germany and so on it would have been a communist government under Russian occupation in one part of Japan and then whatever portion of Japan the United States controlled they would have done something or another with so the hard decisions of foreign policy are made in these types of terrifying contacts where the fear of nuclear war is real the fear of foreign occupation annexation are real and you know this often leads to immoral terrible regrettable decisions the government's make and it leads to decisions I mean the other the other terrible pattern and looking at this type of political history is that governments tend to make decisions that make sense at one point in time given overwhelming factors that are fleeting that were only true for a few years or a few decades but then instead those policies remain binding for very long periods of time did japan sacrifice some of its sovereignty to establish and maintain american military bases in Okinawa yes it's easy now to look back on that decision and sort of ridicule Japan for having made a terrible sacrifice well if you look at the long list of men who held the role of Prime Minister of Japan in each period of history many of them not all revisited the question and reconsidered the question at each stage of history of whether or not the American military presence in Okinawa was really necessary and obviously that's something that was reconsidered again after the fall of the Berlin Wall but during the long period of the Cold War when the fear of nuclear war was real and pressing each one of those political leaders in Japan decided again and again that yes it was worth the price to pay and the price did involve some crimes against humanity it did involve you know there's a year-by-year some numbers of murder of course large numbers of prostitution you know the sort of social consequences of having such a huge military presence on a tiny island ecological environmental consequences for Okinawa and you know signing treaties that gave very unequal powers to the Americans in Japanese territory yep that was the price to pay and in the context of nuclear war and in the context of looking across that northern border to see what happened to cover photo in the context of being a leader of Japan and not just reading what's going on in the newspapers but if having handed to you dossiers by the CIA that are showing you at each juncture with you know microfilm and secret photographs that are showing you as a matter of fact what's happening in North Korea what's happening in China during the Great Leap Forward what's happening in China during the Cultural Revolution period by period the terrifying threat of communism as it looked from the perspective of a prime minister of japan those are the factors that motivated one prime minister after another to make that extraordinary sacrifice to make that choice to to make the deal with the American military and Japan did have the choice they could have made a different deal with a different power or at the different set of powers but for most of the Cold War period the Japanese definitely felt they did not have anyone offering them a better deal than the US military and it was always acknowledged that if there were a nuclear war the first target to get wiped off the map in Japan was going to be Okinawa and that's why the location is as moderately remote as it is and that's why by contrast you didn't say get an enormous military operation of the same kind in the middle of Taiwan the US military president I want is a lot lighter than you think it is but Taiwan likewise of course was a very eager military ally that was desperately afraid of being conquered by China and you know had real reasons to cling to American military support and now you know comparisons are odious I think it's really worth asking as the question has been raised by this fellow in responding to it is worth asking did japan make the right decision did japan get a good deal or a bad deal are the consequences the two immoral or too terrible to justify the decision made in terms of the span of the u.s. Empire around the world Japan certainly didn't get the worst deal if you'd like a sort of shocking contrast try to google the Chagos Islanders also known as the Chagossians that is a case that the United Nations has somewhat reluctantly ruled on as genocide but in that instance the entire population of a set of islands was extirpated was k doubt by the British in order to create a joint british-american military base and most reports say that that base is about 99% American and one percent British but the British get the blade so that was a post-world war two cold war tactic um that's really lamentable and again one of the reasons why it's lamentable is that we have to consider it in terms of the context of alternatives did japan have other alternatives to consider rather than turning okinawa into a sort of enormous aircraft carrier for the US military yeah they had some and i think at any juncture in that history you can look at what those options were it's a history of negotiations in from one decade to the next between the japanese government in the US military and they did sign new and different agreements one of my textbooks here simply titled The Clash baile Faber it goes through each and every set of negotiations where the Japanese in the u.s. reevaluate who's committed to do what but you know the Japanese were not sleep walking through this arrangement with the US and they certainly were not trapped into it against their will they were trapped by terrible circumstances in the Cold War Thailand is a really interesting case study and you'll see some of the same kind of social problems created by a massive military presence during the long period of US military what's the right word to use during the remarkably long history of the Americans bombing Vietnam Cambodia and Laos of course they had aircraft carriers floating in the ocean off the east coast of Vietnam but it was much more cost effective to build military bases and air force bases on the other side of Vietnam which is to say northeastern thailand now as with the question of okinawa you have a very short discussion a very short analysis if we just look at this in terms of morality if we're only asking the question what the thai government did is it moral or immoral especially when you look at Thailand's history with Cambodia it's very easy to say this was immoral this was bad discussion but again we're kind of dehumanizing the actors then we're omitting the really important questions of what were the alternatives what was the contacts what were the motivations that shaped that decision the Thailand made all of the San plateau the San plateau is a huge area of northeastern thailand all of the San plateau became encrusted with US military bases and uh on the coast near the resort town that is now called Pattaya there was also a deep-water docking facility used for submarines including nuclear submarines so you had the US Navy the US Air Force the CIA and a huge military presence in this part of northeastern thailand and the consequences for the thai economy for thai culture i really do think have been more dramatic than the consequences for Okinawa okido not to diminish what happened Okinawa but in terms of the the culture of mass prostitution many published sources have observed look the long American military presence during the Vietnam War and afterwards as the press the case in Cambodia this had this effect of commercializing prostitution and Thailand like never before creating the link between prostitution and and international tourism and what have you of course I'm not saying there was zero prostitution country before but this transformed Thai culture in many ways and yes as was complained about in Okinawa when you have that big military presence there there's also a local cost in blood the types of guys who work for the CIA during the Cold War period especially all sorts of different people the guys who wear a suit and tie and fly over from Washington DC those are the guys you see on the news but the CIA works with a lot of local contractors one of the pieces of slang used during the Cold War period was knuckle draggers when the CIA would use the same people in north africa in latin america in tibet they would reassign people from one covert operation to another around the globe and that was one of the reasons why they often had shockingly little cultural sensitivity or local awareness the guys who showed up and started killing and torturing people in Thailand might have just gotten off an airplane from nicaragua or any other theater where the US was deploying operatives and unlike the presence in okinawa which was predominantly the professional US military the american presence in ihsan in northeastern thailand that was largely a CIA led war or series of wars because there was first there was the early Vietnam period then later the separate Wars in Laos and Cambodia Cambodia is very complicated but legally the u.s. treated that as two separate Wars they divided into two zones two different code names not worth the dressing into here but yeah let's be real when you sacrifice your sovereignty and make an agreement with a foreign power to allow military occupation within your own country build military base in your country there is a price in blood yes there's also prostitution and people get pregnant dead bodies turn up in strange places and it is no joke and there can be military investigations that could be military tribunals but all of the government's making these agreements japanese government eyerman i think they all understood how deadly serious these agreements were now in thailand's case in contrast of japan nuclear war was not the most likely threat they weren't primarily afraid of nuclear bombardment but they were terrified of the direct and imminent threat that Thailand would be conquered by Vietnam you may not know this but in the later stages of the Vietnam conflict if you like under Richard Nixon when Nixon was in some ways negotiating peace and in some ways just negotiating a new period of warfare for which he's heated by historians he's hated and despised but almost everyone who writes about this period of history Thailand was put in the surreal position of being told by the United States thank you for your support thank you for this enormous military presence you provide us with for decades and decades since the end of World War two thank you for you know allowing us to use these military bases in our war against communism or war to defend you from Vietnam but now now that Nixon has made a new special agreement things are going to change slightly and the United States and Thailand will henceforth jointly support Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge the most notorious communists in the history of Asia even compared to the standard for bloodshed set by the Soviet Union mainland china etc Paul Pott in the Khmer Rouge are especially despised now several of the national leaders of Thailand of course were shocked at this state of affairs and there was some degree of democratic debate and dissent in Thailand but why are we supporting this American policy in Cambodia and again if our analysis is just morale is just ethical then it's going to be a short analysis if you ask the question was it moral for Thailand to support Papa in the Khmer Rouge no it's completely immoral it's completely unethical ethically it's the wrong decision however if we're willing to think sympathetically about the decisions made by political leaders put ourselves in their shoes look at the historical context and say what motivated this then we get a very different perspective if you were the prime minister of thailand and you sit down with a representative the american government who has CIA dossiers with them puts them down on the table and he says to you look here's the game plan you may not like Paul Pott you may not like the Khmer Rouge we don't like them much either but Paul Pott is anti Vietnamese he's communist but he's fighting against communist Vietnam so as long as we're supporting Pol Pot that's increasing the distance between the vietnamese army and Thailand's borders and if we give up supporting the Khmer Rouge if Thailand asks the United States to withdraw its you its military presence from me San from northeastern thailand then guess what happens the Vietnamese finally defeat Pol Pot the Khmer Rouge because Vietnamese want many victories but the border the border moved back and forth more decades of civil war what you don't want what Thailand doesn't want is the Vietnamese Army being in western Cambodia sitting on the Thai border a two-day march or Bangkok able to conquer Bangkok at any time you don't want to be in that position and you definitely don't want to be facing that threat with anything less than the absolute maximum American military presence in every tiny v Harbor on every toy Air Force Base maintaining those vietnam-era military installations in northeastern telling so yes the sacrifices made were real the ethical dilemmas were real and the ethical consequences were real thailand in many ways thai culture was transformed by a sort of american military occupation if you use the word occupation in more ways than one but the enormous American military presence in Thailand that was continuous from the end of World War two right up until Bill Clinton this had huge consequences for Thailand and it's very easy now to look back at that history and and sort of sneer at the fear of nuclear war as if it could have never happened it's easy to look back now at what why would Thailand be afraid of Cambodia Cambodia such a poverty-stricken powerless nation it's easy even to sort of laugh at the idea that Vietnam was organized militarily capable of conquering Thailand in that period and that they had motivation to do so easy to laugh but those things now when you look at each historical period when those decisions are made in context you will feel sympathy for the devil you will feel sympathy for people who are just as despicable as Richard Nixon including Richard Nixon himself because you'll see decisions they've made see what motivated them will shape them and you'll see how few alternatives that things are changing right now things as just mentioned things really didn't change even under Bill Clinton when I when I went to university first time around Bill Clinton in the United States were still supporting Pol Pot in the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and Pol Pot is not a title it's one man's name it was the same guy the same Pol Pot was still going to get massages in northeastern thailand in places like ubon ratchathani and udon thani in ubon ratchathani you can go to a massage parlor that as a photograph of Paul Pott as one of their former regular customers up on the wall and guess what post it wasn't unknown the US military American soldiers were going to the same massage parlors the US military bases that were directly providing military supplies to paul potts army were right there these operations were top secret but they were completely flagrantly out in the open okay it's no mystery there's a film you can watch it's probably available within YouTube called Cambodia colon the betrayal by John Pilger pilger as pilg er um some of Pilcher's films are very poor in quality but that particular film it's documentary film that's quite good and that just looks at the reality of American support for Papa umarov's in that period one of the most tragic aspects is that these alliances these military and policy decisions that were made for short term reasons or short term fears had such terrible long-term consequences once Thailand was in bed with the US Army their whole priority was try to keep the American army there to try to maintain the same level of military preparedness that had existed while the Vietnam War was at its hottest point afterwards because for Thailand that was a defensive not an offensive concern they didn't want to conquer Vietnam but they absolutely wanted to keep that military presence there at all costs to defend themselves and as bad in a moral as that may have been at that time what were the alternatives Thailand didn't have the option of making a military alliance with India to serve the same purpose it would be a very different world if they had I don't mention India as a random example when you look at the history of Cambodia and ask yourself what if how could things have been better military intervention from the Indian Army was a real possibility India could have made the decision and and probably India could have signed an agreement with Vietnam at many points India could have in theory occupied Cambodia it's it's very easy to say of course looking back okay well what if India and Thailand had tried to solve this problem instead of Thailand in the USA I don't say this to make excuses for anyone I don't say to glorify the US Army if India had deployed an enormous military presence in Cambodia there would have been prostitution there would have been massacres perhaps small-scale but yeah there would have been serious violence there would have been a cost in blood and they're also would have been a tremendous cultural impact now probably would have been better than what actually happened however I'm just trying to reiterate that the price of this type of military pact is still very real and quite terrifying for the people involved in making today Shinzo Abe a in Japan is trying to make a military alliance with India phase one of the military alliance is already a reality they already have signed agreements by the way Shinzo Abe a is looking at military alliances with India with Australia even Mongolia believe it or not Shinzo Abe a is looking at trying to have a more balanced set of pan democratic military relationships instead of relying so heavily in the United States but again during the Cold War period during the so-called nuclear umbrella period when the fear of nuclear warfare was very real when hostilities with communist China North Korea said are really hot and ongoing and when Japan had to look across the border north to see what was left of Kara futo to see what society was like under Russian occupation under communist occupation just a couple kilometers away you may forget this what is the closest foreign country to Japan it's not Korea that's not China either the closest border they've got is with Russia because Russia occupied and still occupies their northernmost island during the Cold War Japan did not have the option of moving away from an American alliance to instead have an alliance with India or anyone else you name it they definitely did not have the option of instead signing a deal with Russia when governments make decisions that sacrifice their own sovereignty they're doing so with a full awareness of the price that they are going to pay South Korea is one of the most saddening examples to examine but in the in South Korea this question of prostitution and so on the South Korean government they were directly involved in managing prostitution for US soldiers in the whole Cold War period after post-world war two period whatever you want to say so that wasn't just private sector I mean in Thailand it was independent hotels and bars and pimps and so on who were running that business but in South Korea right off the bat South Korean government was so desperate to keep the American military there that they made a conscious decision to set up a prostitution service and start recruiting women to work in brothels for US soldiers you know it's not an accident is it immoral is it shocking did it you know can you find tragic all histories connect to that absolutely it's very sad there are many strange and heartbreaking stories that came out of that however South Korean government at every stage of that history what is the dossier being put on their desk they're seeing the terrifying reality of what's going on in North Korea China changes from one period to the next but they're seeing the horrifying reality of what happened during the Great Leap Forward of what happened during the cultural revolution in a way that the general public never did because they are getting debriefings directly from the CIA other intelligence sources about what's going on in there communism for them the threat is more terrifying and more real than it was for average people who were just reading the newspapers whenever governments make decisions based on the worst-case scenario in retrospect it looks silly because the worst case scenario didn't happen I remember reading a policy paper that was warning that the United States of America should not plan its oil and gas industry around the worst case scenario they should look at average scenarios typical scenarios likely scenarios and some range of problems that would come up because trillions and trillions of dollars be wasted there be very negative consequences if the u.s. really put in place what was necessary to deal with the absolute worst case scenario for access to oil and gas on military matters on horrid brass tacks political science the worst case scenario is what you're thinking about when you look in the mirror every morning before you go to work for Japan the worst case scenario was that Okinawa got obliterated first and foremost by atom bomb dropping on it for South Korea still to this day every scenario they look at for likely military outcomes of a North Korea assumes that Seoul the capital city of Korea will be completely obliterated not even by nuclear weapons by conventional bombardment because North Korea is within firing range of soul and they are capable of wiping out that city basically in a heartbeat so one prime minister after another one present after another in these countries had to look at those hard facts make hard choices and make sacrifices and very often those decisions considered in isolation they are unethical they are immoral they are lamentable but the moral judgment alone is not enough we need to engage in a more sophisticated and complex analysis of why these things happen